1 — Wednesday, September 15, 2021 // The Statement
BY LANE KIZZIAH, STATEMENT CORRESPONDENT
Reflections on a last first day
Public Policy senior Maddi Walsh poked her
head into the classroom while the rest of us milled
awkwardly around the first floor of Weill Hall. We
all stood quietly — awkwardly — not remembering
the proper pre-class etiquette. At what point is it
acceptable to walk into the room? How does one
engage in small talk? Should I leave and come back
just to avoid the sheer awkwardness? The things
that should’ve been second nature as I entered my
16th year of school were now completely foreign
after almost two years of online learning.
Growing up, I’d always gotten the pre-school
butterflies. I’d make my mom take me back-to-
school shopping outrageously early so I could
labor over the choices of which lunchbox would
appropriately accent my third-grade experience
and which brands of colored pens would improve
my abysmal handwriting. As I’ve gotten older, the
novelty of the first day has naturally worn off, but
this year it all came flooding back.
I’d been looking forward to the start of
school for weeks with the fervor of an anxious
kindergartener. When the big day arrived, my
roommates and I all tried on multiple outfits, and
I’d spent an hour making sure all my books were
in order, my water bottle filled, my iced coffee in
just the right travel cup.
But when our professor, Megan Tompkins-
Stange, told Walsh we could come into the
classroom, I felt an unexpected wave of anxiety.
I was overwhelmed by the physical presence of
the class, the rows of desks, the faces I recognized
and those I didn’t, the professor at the front of the
room.
And even beyond the social factors, there
are new COVID-related taboos to think about.
Is it rude to take a seat directly next to someone
else? Should I leave room for them? Can I lower
my mask and sip my water? All of these factors
culminated in one all-important question: Where
do I sit down?
After taking a quick scan of the masked faces
around me, I chose a seat in the back. A few
rows ahead of me, Walsh was having a similar
experience.
“Something I didn’t realize until I got back here
was that I haven’t introduced myself to someone
in just so long in person,” she said. “That little
small talk that you do with the people next to you
that we didn’t get to do over Zoom, I totally forgot
about all. It was so awkward.”
After getting to know someone over Zoom —
at least as well as you can get to know someone
through breakout-room chit-chat — it’s hard to
gauge that first in-person interaction. I was sitting
next to someone who I’ve sat on a Zoom with
probably 100 times; I know her political opinions
and what she thought of our professors, but I didn’t
know her height or whether to introduce myself
again. As I sat down, I tried to preoccupy myself
with any task I could think of. I organized my
pencils, took out all my books and put them back
in my bag. I flipped through my planner, looking
through a list of imaginary tasks to complete. A
couple of times, I thought about saying hi, but in
the end, I opted to sit in silence and wait for class
to start.
Even professors felt the strange circumstances
and first-day jitters. University of Michigan
Education professor Matt Diemer is used to
reading non-verbal cues from his students to
assess their comprehension and engagement,
something made much more difficult when
everyone is wearing masks.
“I get 25% of the information from people’s
faces I used to because I can’t see so much of
people’s faces,” he said. “This isn’t to complain
about masking — I think it’s important — but it’s
just something I had not anticipated about what it
would be like to be in the classroom again.”
Still, Diemer is excited to be back in person and
looking forward to getting back to the aspects of
teaching he missed even if it isn’t entirely normal.
As he aptly put it, returning to the classroom is a
double-edged sword.
“If you’re a freshman at Michigan or you’re a
first-year graduate student, you’re excited about
going, and it’s been a lifelong goal for you to go
there maybe, but it’s still a new challenge, a new
stressful situation that always kind of introduces
normative stresses,” Diemer said. “I think just
transition periods are difficult because they’re
new and novel and may take us out of our habits
and routine, so they introduce some stress.
They’re also great things but it’s stress at the same
time.”
Business sophomore Claire Strimling is
essentially living the freshman transition a year
late. Even though she was in Ann Arbor for all of
last year, she only had one hybrid class.
“It was really, really amazing being in person
and just being with other people,” she said. “I
don’t even think I realize how many people went
to Michigan.”
Though she prefers in-person learning,
Strimling was worried that her classes this
semester would be harder than the ones she
took online. She went to a small high school in
Las Vegas and is still learning to navigate the
aspects of a big school — large class sizes and
less face-to-face time with teachers — that most
upperclassmen had the opportunity to adjust to as
soon as we got on campus.
Even as a senior, I resonate with that idea
of the freshman transition, in the best possible
way. Underlying the awkwardness I felt was an
overwhelming feeling of excitement. Last year,
I would take most of my classes from my bed,
occasionally turning off my camera to go make a
sandwich or refill my coffee. I felt disconnected
not just from my classes or classmates, but from
the very idea of Michigan. This year, everything
feels like a significant first: the first walk to class,
the first assignment, the first time sitting in the
library.
On my second day, I got lost in Mason Hall
and ended up on the wrong floor. I took a quick
lap in an effort to not look so blatantly lost and
then snuck down the back stairs to my classroom.
There was something in that moment that made
me fall in love with Michigan all over again.
“(The start of in-person classes) brought
kind of a sense of fulfillment back to my day,”
Business senior Matt Kocsis said. “I guess just
once again being able to go out on campus, seeing
everybody also on the pilgrimage to class. Things
felt certainly back to normal, and it was the energy
and the enthusiasm that I’ve been so used to for so
long.”
That energy has been palpable all over campus.
“It was really difficult for students and
professors to truly have engaging conversations
and not really being able to read body language
and stuff (over Zoom),” LSA junior Lily Anderson
added. “So I’ve loved being back in person with
them and kind of having their energy to bounce
off of and seeing how excited they are to be back in
person as well has been really motivating.”
Even with this faux sense of normalcy, this is
by no means a normal semester. After the first two
weeks of classes, there have been 322 COVID-19
cases reported on campus. By the second day of
classes, LSA junior Stanley Wang had already
gotten two email notifications that someone in
his class had tested positive. COVID-19 was a
major concern for him coming into the school
year because many of his friends are international
students who didn’t have access to the vaccine at
home.
“I knew that (the email notifications) would
happen, but I guess I didn’t know it would be that
quick,” he said.
Kocsis is less concerned about the risk of
infection. He feels comfortable knowing that such
a high percentage of students are vaccinated and
he has no underlying health concerns. Naturally,
there’s a large range of feelings within the student
body. Most of us fall somewhere in the middle,
wanting to experience this year to the fullest but
still holding a nagging sense of doubt in the back
of our minds.
Many professors, Diemer included, have
younger children at home who are not yet vaccine
eligible. One of Diemer’s concerns coming into the
semester was that students would be resistant to
wearing masks, a fear that proved unfounded.
Now with the first day behind us, Diemer is
focused on being flexible.
“The challenges for professors are just trying
to know what to expect, to try to be adaptive and
flexible and customizable,” he said. “But at the
same time, having a plan and a structure, so trying
to thread some line between not being so rigid and
totally unprepared if a student has to miss class
because of a COVID exposure ... There’s a lot of
invisible labor that professors are doing to try to
be responsive and customizable, and this is labor
I want to do. I think it’s important for students’
well-being and educational success, but being
back in person, this term isn’t like every other
term.”
It wasn’t a normal first day of school, and it
won’t be a normal semester that follows. I’ve
already gotten two notifications that someone
in my classes has tested positive. The mixture of
fear and optimism and excitement I have for the
coming months is always changing. As Diemer
said, we have to be adaptable.
But when my first class was over, I walked out
alone, still unsure of how to navigate classroom
chit-chat. On my walk home, I thought about my
last first day of school and all the first days that
came before it. Who knows what will happen in
the next few months or whether we’ll be able to
keep it up until the end of the semester. In that
moment, I was just grateful that there were people
on the street, backpack straps in hand, classes to
go to.